Why I Don’t Do Ayahuasca: My Truth about Plant Medicine and Integrity

Plant Medicine is ancient. It carries memory, intelligence, and spirit far beyond anything modern culture can fully grasp. And yet, in recent years, it has increasingly been treated as a trend. As something to try and as a lifestyle upgrade. Kind of it seems like another item on a spiritual checklist to cross of. Ayahuasca, San Pedro, Peyote and other powerful plants are often approached today as a popular thing to do since everyone else does it instead of devotion, through intensity rather than integrity. This is where something essential gets lost.

When Plant Medicine Becomes a Trend

No plant should ever be handed out because it is popular. No plant should ever be taken because everyone else is doing it. Plant Medicine does not work like that. These plants are not here to entertain us or to provide peak experiences on demand. They work through initiation. They open layers of the psyche, the body, and the nervous system that require maturity, grounding, and support. When preparation is missing, when the space is not held with integrity, and when integration is ignored, Plant Medicine can overwhelm rather than heal.

I learned this through my own experience. At 23, I drank a mushroom shake without knowing the dosage. There was no preparation, no guidance, no support. What followed were hours that felt like a lifetime. My sense of reality completely dissolved. I did not know how to anchor myself. It was too much, too fast, too soon. That experience shaped my relationship with Plant Medicine deeply and permanently.

Healing Is Not the Ceremony

Healing does not happen just because you attend a ceremony. It does not happen because you drank something powerful. Healing happens in the integration, in your nervous system, in your body. It happens when the vision finds its way into your everyday life. Without integration, nothing truly changes. This is where Healing vs. Psychedelic Culture becomes an important distinction. Chasing ceremonies without grounding often creates more fragmentation instead of wholeness. The intensity might feel transformative in the moment, but without embodiment, it fades or destabilizes.

There Is Nothing Wrong with the Plants

There is nothing wrong with Ayahuasca and there is nothing wrong with these plants. I hold deep respect for them. I feel their spirit. I listen to them. They are ancient beings with their own intelligence and timing. The issue is humans misusing them. Trendy facilitators. Spaces held for profit rather than devotion. Plants being given to people who are not resourced to meet what opens. Far too many ceremonies without preparation, without aftercare, without responsibility. This is not the fault of the plants. It is the consequence of treating something sacred as consumable.

You Do Not Need Ayahuasca to Heal

This may feel confronting, but it matters to say it clearly. You do not need Ayahuasca to meet your true self. You do not need it to look at your shadows. You do not need it to receive visions or understand your path. There are many ways to heal. Many ways to remember. Many ways to reconnect. Gentle plants, some growing right outside your door, can offer profound guidance when approached with presence and respect. Plants like nettle, dandelion, rose, or sage. Plants that work slowly, subtly, and deeply. Often, we do not need to search so far. Everything is already within you. What is needed is the ability to listen.

Integrity Over Intensity

True Plant Medicine work asks for devotion, not consumption. For grounding, not chasing. For responsibility, not shortcuts. It asks us to slow down in order to integrate and to let transformation unfold in the body and in life, not just in your visions.

This is my truth about Plant Medicine. It is not meant to please everyone. But the plants deserve honesty.